TIPS: How to optimize image SEO for a website

We believe that your journey to SEO could be accompanied with these few guide to Image SEO.

1: Import the right image

Give first priority in adding your own original images, i.e your article should have an image that has the same subject as your article. It is not advisable to use any image just for the sole purpose of adding an image. The image should portray the topic of the post or webpage, or have some illustrative importance within the article The reason behind is that an image surrounded by interrelated text, ranks higher for the keyword associated with it for optimization.

2: Arrange image for use in your blog post/content

Finding the right image for your content/blog post, be it a chart, an illustration or simply a photo, the next step is to optimizing that image as per the associated keyword or content on your website. This involves several things to be taken into consideration

3: Select the right file name

Image SEO begins with selecting the right file name for the Image. This is the first place where you can use the keyword for which you want that particular content or page to rank. Google cannot read images. Google can only read text and so in case of images it reads the text related to it starting from the name of your image file. For example, if your image is a cat with background of Eiffel tower, the file name should not be IMG-00012345.jpg, but cat-at-eiffel-tower.jpg. The main keyword would be “cat at Eiffel Tower”, as it is the main subject of the photo and that is why it should be added at the beginning of the file name.

4: Scale for image SEO

Image loading time is a crucial factor when User Experience is concerned and thus, important for SEO. The faster it takes for a site to load, the easier it is to visit and thus indexing of the particular page is better. Images have a huge impact on loading times of a webpage, Even if you add a huge image and display it really small on the webpage, like using a 1500×500 pixels image and showing it at 150×50 pixels size. The entire weight of the image will still have to be loaded. Thus, images should be scaled to the size you want to show it. WordPress provides the image in multiple sizes after uploading it. Unfortunately that doesn’t optimize the file size as well, that’s just the display size of the image. Image can be scaled using simple tools like Microsoft paint, Photos-cape, etc.

5: Reduce the image size

The next step in image SEO optimization is to make sure that the size of the image that is displayed in the smallest possible file size. You can reduce the image size by several methods like by removing the EXIF data.

6: Add a caption to the image

The caption is the text that accompanies the image on the webpage which also draws d readers attention. For most images it is the text in the gray section below it or displayed in a separate div below the but on the image. People use those captions in scanning an article. Right after the headings, people tend to go through the image and take account of the caption as well in their viewing. Captions are not necessarily be added to all images. Sometimes images serve another purpose other than foe SEO optimization. It is important to decide if the image in question is an image you would want to use for SEO or not. Keeping aside image optimization for SEO you should add a caption to make senses to the visitor. You should think about the visitor first and then image optimization.

7: Provide alt text and title text

The alt text is the descriptive text for an image that is displayed when the image for some reasons could not be displayed to the visitor. In situations where the image is not displayed to the reader, maybe because they have turned off images in their browser or are due to some visual impairment are using some screen reader, the alternative text ensures helps in preserving the information or functionality of the webpage. Make sure you add alt texts that include your SEO keyword and also relate to or describe the image. The alt tag and title tag is to be added to the tag in the HTML source code of the website

7: Add XML image sitemaps

If you are a webmaster or a website developer, you might not be sure of XML image sitemaps. Google says Adding images to your XML sitemaps help Google index your images. So it is a best practice to add them to sitemap for better image SEO optimization.